For Immediate Release May 1996

FROM BAUHAUS TO POP: MASTERWORKS GIVEN BY PHILIP JOHNSON June 6 - September 3, 1996

The Museum of Modern Art honors seven decades of contributions by one of its

most dedicated supporters with FROM BAUHAUS TO POP: MASTERWORKS GIVEN

BY PHILIP JOHNSON, a selection from the hundreds of works he has donated to the

Museum. Presented in honor of the renowned architect's ninetieth birthday, the exhibition,

which opens June 6, features paintings, sculptures, and drawings, as well as posters, design

objects, and architectural models and drawings, many of which epitomize their genres and

have become icons of modern art. In conjunction with the exhibition, Philip Johnson has

organized a special installation of works in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture

Garden, the celebrated space he designed in 1953.

On view through September 3, the exhibition is organized by Kirk Varnedoe, Chief

Curator, and Robert Storr, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, with Terence

Riley, Chief Curator, and Christopher Mount, Assistant Curator, Department of Architecture

and Design. The installation of the Sculpture Garden is made possible by a generous grant

from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund. In addition to the exhibition, the Museum's

annual gala, The Party in the Garden, on June 5, will be dedicated to Mr. Johnson this

year. [Separate release available.]

According to Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, "FROM

BAUHAUS TO POP recognizes Mr. Johnson's support of the Museum since 1930, when

he joined the Advisory Committee of the fledgling institution. For more than sixty years,

- more -

2

his contributions as a curator, donor, architect, and Trustee have aided MoMA's

development as the world's foremost museum of modern art."

Mr. Johnson was director of the Museum's newly created Department of

Architecture from 1932 to 1934 and from 1946 to 1954. (The area was renamed the

Department of Architecture and Design in 1949.) As a curator, he organized some of the

most influential exhibitions in his field, including the groundbreaking 1932 show MODERN

ARCHITECTURE: INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, co-organized with'Henry-Russell

Hitchcock; the 1934 MACHINE ART exhibition of twentieth-century industrial design,

from which the Museum took the nucleus of its Design Collection; and

DECONSTRUCTIVIST ARCHITECTURE, in 1988, co-organized with Mark Wigley.

Mr. Johnson designed the 1964 additions to the building, as well as the Sculpture Garden.

He was elected to the Board of Trustees in 1957.

FROM BAUHAUS TO POP recognizes one of the architect's greatest contributions

to the Museum — the art he has donated to the collection, or provided funds for, since

1932. Beginning with gifts of important German paintings in the 1930s and 1940s,

Mr. Johnson went on to make extensive donations of postwar art; his gifts in the areas of

Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and Minimalism are among the Museum's masterpieces.

Selections of Painting and Sculpture

In all, some eighty paintings, sculptures, and drawings will be on view in the

Museum's first-floor International Council Galleries. Highlights include:

o Otto Dix's uncompromisingly realistic portrait of Dr. Mayer-Hermann (1926),

Mr. Johnson's first gift to the Museum in 1932. Acquired just six years after it was

- more -

4 J

3

painted, it was the first instance of Mr. Johnson's donation of very contemporary work, a

continuing legacy that has lent the collection an important immediacy.

o Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus Stairway (1932), purchased by Mr. Johnson at the

request of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA's first director, an early demonstration of the

Barr/Johnson partnership that led to the donation of so many important works.

o Classic examples of Abstract Expressionism by Barnett Newman (Abraham of

1949), Mark Rothko (Number 10 of 1950), and Franz Kline (White Forms of 1955).

o Jasper Johns' Flag (1954-55), purchased by Mr. Johnson from Johns' first solo

exhibition and later donated to the Museum in honor of Mr. Barr.

o The Museum's first Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962), acquired

immediately after it was painted, as well as Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times (1963), an

important example of the artist's disaster pictures, donated in 1991.

o Other works by important artists including Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly,

Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, and Frank

Stella.

Architecture and Design

Some 70 gifts from Mr. Johnson to the Department of Architecture and Design will

be on view in the PROJECTS gallery across from the Garden Hall. Highlights include:

o Objects from the Jan Tschichold Collection of posters, letterheads, books, and

brochures. Produced during the "graphic arts revolution" of the 1920s and 1930s, they

personify modern graphics with their bold, asymmetrical, simplified style.

- more -

4

o A glass and chrome-plated table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Karl J. Jucher

(1923-24) that embodies the ideals of Bauhaus design, with its embrace of geometric forms

and rejection of applied ornament.

o Architectural models and drawings, including a drawing of the Seagram Building

by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

o Classic design objects by Josef Hoffmann, Mies van der Rohe, Joseph Maria

Olbrich, and Gerrit Rietveld, among others.

Special Garden Installation

For his special exhibition of works in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture

Garden, Mr. Johnson was given complete access to the Museum's vast sculpture collection.

Choosing works for what he describes as "their scale in relation to the garden," Mr.

Johnson's installation contains twenty-one works, eleven of which are not usually on view

in the garden. These include Max Beckman's Self-Portrait (1936), Louise Bourgeois's

Sleeping Figure, 7/(1959), Alberto Giacometti's Spoon Woman (1926-27), and Jacques

Lipchitz's Gertrude Stein (1920).

According to Kirk Varnedoe, "As architect of the Sculpture Garden, Mr. Johnson

has a special vision for the way space is articulated and the way Sculpture works within it.

With this new sculpture installation for the garden, visitors to the Museum will have the

unique opportunity to explore and experience this vision in depth — to see the way the

garden's creator imagines architecture, sculpture, space, and the natural environment

working together." The installation will be on view until the end of the summer.

No. 28 For further information contact Mary Lou Strahlendorff, Department of Communications, 212/708-9755.